Hello wonderful friends. Yesterday we talked about our experience How We Got Paid $$$$ To Plant Fruit and Nut Trees in Our Food Forest. We shared some of the reasons to plant a Food Forest & described what it is! Read that article if you haven't already and you aren't quite sure!

Today we're going to dive into: THE DETAILS how YOU can get the grant!

CSP Webpage

First Steps To Get Planting!

What is this grant?

USDA: CONSERVATION STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM (CSP)

This is a grant through the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service.

It is a Stewardship plan grant where you make a plan with a local extension agent that last 5 years. 3 of those years are planting, but you still get paid for the final two years to maintain the planting.

Conservation Practice 612: Tree/Shrub Establishment
Click here to download the .doc to read the entire Practice.

Adding food-producing trees and shrubs to existing agroforestry plantings.

The document below details the details on applicable land use, practice lifespan, and some requirements (there are more, but this is the beginning set):

Honestly, what we are doing is different than what they usually see.

There are a lot of farmers and ranchers in Missouri, not people who want to create food forests. As mentioned in the previous article, our extension agent is awesome. We told her our goals/dreams and what we wanted to do and she found a grant that fit our needs. This is an example of what worked for us. Making the relationship with your extension agent is of the utmost importance as they walk you through everything. Not many people know about this grant and, at first glance, one may not even be able to tell you could plant the shrub and tree layer of a Food Forest using it.

Here are some of the details of the planting:

These are all of the guidelines and aims of the planting. We talked over our goals and aims with our extension agent and she did all of the paperwork after she understood how we wanted to go about fulfilling the grant.

After we talked with her, she produced a 5-year plan and we looked over it together. We then signed a contract stating that we would fulfill our end of the deal.

She made a map of our land after we had designated annual plantings:

This is the guideline we follow each year. Each color designates a different year and has the amount of acreage stipulated that we will plant. As mentioned earlier, part of the grant is committing to keeping our forest as a forest. We get paid per acre for this and it is called:

Non-industrial Private Forest Land Annual Payment (NIPF)

As far as other tracts of lands (fields, estuaries, marshes, etc), you'll need to consult with your local representative to tailor a plan that fits your needs. If you have a forest, you can likely inquire about the same pattern that we used.

It does vary state by state, but CSP Practices exist Nationwide. Here is the main nationwide webpage. You can search from there to find more information, plus other conservation practices that we don't even know about!

The price per acre depends on practices and your own situation. Again, talk with your local service agent to design a plan that fits your needs and dreams!

Hope that you found this helpful!

In our next post, we'll share what we're planting now and some basics of HOW TO plant a Food Forest and details and examples of the design and planning that goes into it.